Quote of the Week

"Life is 10% of what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it." ~ John C. Maxwell

Saturday, April 4, 2009

GOBI by the Numbers Part Deux

Review of January - We spent the first month learning the *how* behind our scrapping. And made some great inspirational items - admittedly at the time I wasn't sure they were so great as I wanted to dig in and organize... I now have a binder for storing my inspirational ideas - easy to tuck a page from a magazine in, or paint swatches etc. A clipboard to display things that motivate me to scrap/create and I gave my magnet board an update of things I love and want to remember to use.

Week 5 - We spent time finishing up the assignment we had started last week from Aby Garvey. We learned of Clipmarks and wonderful resource for keeping track of things we had found online that 'spoke' to us. We had another book assignment and started to learn our creative space essentials. It was another week of learning the 'how' of scrapbooking for each of us and I found myself again saying 'trust the process' a lot because we were still not organizing...

Week 6 - WendyFINALLY tells us we are going to need to get our energy going. YEAH!! We are going to start organizing - I can't wait because my space - well you saw the photos posted below so I don't need to elaborate right? No wait she wants us to WHAT - empty our spaces?!?!?!? Is this woman totally insane? Does see need to be on medication? Does she have a death wish? Ok so maybe that was a little over the top but I started to say my mantra much louder and more often this week. We were then prompted to sort as we emptied - it's a bit of a stretch but that could be the organizing I have been waiting for couldn't it?. Ok so the 3 piles thing is doable - one for things I want to keep, one for things I no longer love enough to keep and one that is just going out in the trash. Aby again had a bonus handout for us that was very eye opening and thought provoking. This week was also the first of 2 Super Saturdays. We spent the day 'together' in chat and doing various things with the support of our Fearless Leader and other classmates. It was awesome!

Week 7 - We continued to empty our spaces and received this pearl of wisdom...storing things does not make them organized! WOW! WOW!! So simple and yet to this point something I hadn't grasped... And with that we started planning our new spaces using graph paper (or online resources). We started thinking of new furniture or how to re purpose existing items, we were picking color schemes and pretty touches that would make us want to be there full time not just when we were creating.

We determined if our spaces were shared, dedicated, or temporary. We considered all that we would be doing in the space (me - crafting, school, home office). And we started to think about storage options we had been seeing in the book and in online resources Wendy had been sharing with us.

Aby gave us an audio pep talk and we continued to empty/sort/purge.

Week 8 - In Wendy's own words 'Finally, finally, finally we are going to talk about storage containers and shopping.' She went on to tell us that some of us may have had an 'aha' moment and realized we had become collectors and not scrappers. Ouch that one hit close to home... We were encouraged to continue purging and sorting - sorting and purging as well as start thinking about what we need to store so the purchases we made were appropriate. You wouldn't by a bird cage for a fish would you? We were encouraged to really look at the spaces of others that had spoken to us and figure out WHY we like something - was it the color, the fact they had a display area for recent projects, etc. We learned why Wendy had done some of the things she had and I know light bulbs started going off for me as I read what she was sharing. We had another project to make (a way cute desktop organizer) and completed a checklist to start us thinking about how we were going to organize so it would work for us. These last 2 weeks I found I wasn't needing to remind myself to 'trust the process' as much...

The next installment will cover weeks 9-completion of Get Organized Be Inspired. I know yesterday I told you to make sure you took this class next time it was offered but alas today I discovered that was not going to happen as the book which is so integral to the class is out of print. I am hopeful that Wendy and the wonderful people at BPS can figure out some way to offer something as wonderful without the book but only time will tell.

I am including some photos of the new scrapping side of the room. Next time I'll share the office side and likely over the next several days I'll be sharing other snippets of the transformation as well.